Global Voices

English

The world is talking, are you listening?

El Salvador

Rob Mercatante, usually based in Guatemala, just got back from a trip to El Salvador. Here are his reflections on dollarization and donuts.

Costa Rica

Uri Ridelman notes that Costa Rica lost eight places in global IT ranking according to the World Economic Forum. Costa Rica was ranked below El Salvador and Panama, but above Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

Brazil

Made in Brazil explains why 43-year-old astronaut Marcos Pontes was on the front page of all Brazilian papers today.

Bolivia

Eduardo Ávila is covering a developing story at Jorge Wilstermann airport in Cochabamba, where workers of the airline Lloyd Aereo Boliviano are demanding that the indebted airline be nationalized. Writing from Cochabamba, Jim Shultz describes LAB as “one more lab rat in that great IMF-induced economic experiment of privatizing all of Bolivia's state-owned industries,” which took place during the mid-90's.

Next to the runway this morning, I asked Oscar Olivera who, as head of the Cochabamba Factory Workers Union, is supporting the LAB workers, “Is it fair to say that Evo is now tear gassing his friends?” Weary from a week-long hunger strike and having been hit this morning by police, Oscar told me, “Evo is tear gassing his brothers.”

Later, Shultz adds that he thinks that the prospect of nationalizing LAB “is full of problems.”

Argentina

unaRadio is an online radio station based in Argentina which describes itself as “a free medium to distribute the work of independent artists in Spanish and other languages.” You can listen to it in any media player by clicking here.

Updates

Bar Deportes lists the top thirty sports blogs according to Alexa (ES). They nearly all focus on football.

Mongolia

Luke Distelhorst writes about the case of a journalist in Mongolia being taken to court for slander by the country's president and says that the country would greatly benefit from more skilled investigative journalists and greater access to government documents.

Kazakhstan

Betsy, author of Stanmenistan, writes about Kazakh weddings.

Armenia

Raffi K. of Life in Armenia writes about tensions in Georgia between ethnic Georgians and ethnic Armenians.

Kyrgyzstan

David Read, a blogger in Bishkek, writes about the trials and tribulations of getting a wireless broadband connection in Kyrgyzstan.